Residents challenge council plans to demolish their homes

Central Hill housing estate in South London is threatened with demolition. Residents are challenging the “regeneration”. Photos by Wasi Daniju, words by Lotte Lewis.

Lambeth Council
plans to demolish the Central Hill estate where I live with my dad in South
London. Central
Hill is one of six estates threatened with demolition. There are 456 homes on the estate and a long-established,
close knit community. That will be lost during a regeneration programme that
could take more than a decade to complete. Even then, there is no guarantee people could
afford homes on the new site. Most people are against the plans, but feel ignored
by the council. There are residents here who have lived on the estate since its
completion in 1975.

The open day took
place four days after the devastating Grenfell Tower fire. As I walked through
the tightly knitted corridors of the estate, I heard worried voices: “Do we have any cladding like Grenfell’s?
Can we get the council to install sprinklers in our flats?”

Campaign group Architects
for Social Housing have spent two years working with residents in the Central
Hill to design an alternative plan, showing the possibility of building more
housing on the estate and refurbishing existing housing – without demolishing a
single home. Lambeth Council instantly dismissed the proposal without further
explanation.

Maybe
we are not entitled to these views. Or the spacious flats, the greenery and the
tranquillity. Lambeth Council’s ‘regeneration’ plan will see us kicked from our
homes. The area will be given to those deemed worthy of the space: developers,
investors and anyone rich enough to buy the replacement luxury flats (white
businessmen, from the look of the images in Lambeth’s design leaflets).

‘Housing crisis’
is all over Lambeth’s leaflets for the project. A stream of leaflets is posted
through my dad’s door. On its specially designed website the council
writes: “We need these better homes for existing residents, and more new homes
to help tackle Lambeth’s housing crisis.”

But what sort of
housing crisis? Why is the solution knocking down spacious, well-built homes?

The council makes
it sound like there aren’t enough houses in London for people to live in. But there
are nearly
20,000 empty homes in the capital, worth about £9.4bn based on the average
cost of a London home, which is £474,704. In Lambeth there are 756 empty homes
and in the borough of Kensington & Chelsea, where Grenfell Tower still
stands, there
are 1,399 empty homes.

Residents say the
council told them construction could last 10 to 15 years. Meanwhile, it is
unclear where we will live. Or to use
the council’s terminology, where we will be ‘decanted’ to. It’s highly unlikely
that we will be able to return to the area at all, but if some do, they will be
returning to a transformed area. Towering blocks of flats will replace Rosemary
Stjernstedt’s vision. Approximately
a fifth of residents are elderly and worry about losing their accessible
maisonettes. In light of Grenfell everyone is fearful.

The strength and
solidarity witnessed in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire demonstrates the
thriving survival of community in spite of daily attacks from central
government and local councils.

Many living on
Central Hill estate have been here since its completion in 1975, and at the
open day referred to the destruction of the community, rather than just the
physical estate. One resident said that on some days, it took her nearly an
hour to get from one side of the estate to the other, because on her way she
would bump into so many people she has built friendships with over the years.
The strength of our communities are a threat to capitalism – and the desire to
dismantle it by those in power is clear. There is a painted mural in the middle
of the estate that the community had commissioned to read ‘Save Central Hill
Community’. When Lambeth Council saw this, they ordered that it be repainted,
and now it only reads ‘Community’.

Many living on the
estate are suffering physically and emotionally from the prospect of having no
home, as well as the continually changing “evolution of the promise” made to
residents by Lambeth Council. The term ‘regeneration’ – spouted by developers,
on council surveys and gentrifying businesses – refers to new growth after loss or breakage. Our communities aren’t broken,
and where and who we live with are not without value.

Lambeth Council has
set up Homes
For Lambeth, a standalone property development company, to manage the
demolition and rebuild of the six estates. When the new housing is built, Homes
for Lambeth, rather than Lambeth Council, will be responsible for maintenance
and managing tenancies. Homes for Lambeth is the glossy face of its £120m
project with promises to increase housing capacity by nearly 45 per cent. But
residents are wary. London councils have form in steamrolling through regeneration
projects with little meaningful community consultation. The Heygate
Estate regeneration in Elephant & Castle is the famous example: the
number of social rented homes fell from 1,200 to 79. A one-bedroom flat will
set you back £380,000. More
rooms if you have a million-pounds to spare.

Some
residents worry that the estate has been neglected and poorly managed by the council;
the shabbier the estate is the easier it is to argue the case for regeneration.
The council’s response to residents’ complaints has been to ignore them, and as
Grenfell has shown, this is happening to social tenants across London.

Even
so, the estate meets the Lambeth’s own housing standards. An internal survey found of residents revealed
that the estate is structurally sound, and that refurbishment would cost around
a tenth of the current plan to demolish and rebuild. Regeneration is political: rather than properly
inspect the mould on my bedroom wall, or make sure all streetlamps work
properly when I walk home at night, Lambeth Council will erase the failures they
have chosen to ignore.

One Central Hill
resident declared at the open day: “There is no such thing as the voiceless;
there are only those who have their voices systematically and deliberately
smothered by those with greater power.”

The evening of the
open day, I walked into Crystal Palace and came across the graffiti artist
Artful Dodger painting a mural of Grenfell on an empty wall. It was a warm
night, and as groups of passers by sat down together and watched him paint,
conversations about Grenfell leading to gentrification and our own areas. When
finished, the mural read, Grenfell…How
many more will follow? The Council painted over it the next day.

Edited by Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi for Shine A Light at openDemocracy.

To follow Wasi on Twitter: @knox_o

Lotte tweets @lotte_lee_lewis

To follow Rebecca and Shine A Light:

@Rebecca_Omonira

@SHINEreports

About the authors

Wasi Daniju is a qualified Person-Centred therapist, and a photographer, with a focus on photojournalism and depiction of lesser-represented groups. She has a keen interest in social and ecological justice, and a strong belief in community organising. Wasi tweets @knox_o

Lotte is a volunteer at The
Unity Centre, a no borders centre offering practical and emotional solidarity
and support to anyone affected by border and migration controls. Lotte tweets @lotte_lee_lewis

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